This award supports Volker Schmidt and students from the University of Michigan in a collaboration with Ulrich Maas of the Institute for Technical Combustion at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. The focus of the collaboration will be to produce a reliable numerical description of ignition processes that accommodates timescales covering many orders of magnitude and many chemical species and their related reaction rates. Initiating combustion is a critical step for both performance and safety related issues in many technical devices. An important example is the spark-initiated combustion used in reciprocating internal combustion engines. There, ignition and subsequent flame development and propagation are controlled by the highly complex interaction of physical parameters like turbulence, temperature, and pressure with chemical parameters, such as the composition of the mixtures. The expertise in laser-based imaging techniques at the University of Michigan and the expertise in multi-dimensional modeling of ignition processes that includes detailed chemical kinetics at the University of Stuttgart, when combined in the framework of an international exchange of students and scientists, will improve our understanding of the complex interaction of turbulence and ignition chemistry. Velocity and equivalence ratio measurements in an optical direct injection engine performed at the University of Michigan will assist improvements to simulation tools at the University of Stuttgart. In addition, involving students from both partner institutions will enhance the educational experience for those students beyond their current focus in their respective research projects and will allow them to study in a foreign country; this is almost a must in today's global research and business environment. Students will learn skills that they then can implement in their research projects at their home institutions. Substantial synergy is expected from this mutual training arrangement for both groups. Joining forces will enhance the outcome of the separate research efforts and is expected to result in significant progress of our understanding of turbulence-ignition coupling and our ability to simulate it.
